Keith Lyon traveled more than one hundred miles from Natchez to protest.
“I feel like our country is in an absolute crisis,” he said. “Perhaps, domestically, the worst since the Civil War. We have a president who is trampling upon constitutional rights, checks and balances, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, due process, habeas corpus, the environment, the importance of federal workers, the importance of scientific research, medical issues.”
He says the recent controversy behind President Trump’s decision to impose a universal 10% percent tariff on imported goods also led him to want to demonstrate.
“Anybody who has looked at the tariffs and what it's done to the economy and people's 401k’s and retirement should know the man is absolutely incompetent and clueless,” he said. “Even in the area that people thought he was confident, which is to say the economy.”
This was the fourth such protest in Jackson since President Trump began his second term - the first had only around 40 protesters.
Madison resident Virden Jones says he decided to attend in order to speak out against the recent case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia - an undocumented migrant the Trump administration says was deported accidentally to a terrorist prison in El Salvador.
“My concern about the lack of due process, well, they're ignoring it on this man Garcia that's down in El Salvador right now,” he said. “Essentially saying they shipped him out and there's nothing they can do about it. That could happen to any of us. It absolutely could.”
Jones said he was also concerned about what he sees as the lack of response from the Republican members of Mississippi’s U.S. Congressional delegation.
“Our congressional delegation is charged to represent our interests, not just the Republican interests in the state, but everyone's interest in the state,” he said. “I see them being very, very silent, if not complicit with everything that's going on. We have pleaded with them to come to Mississippi and have a town hall meeting.”
